We Were On NPR!
When I am not thinking up new renewable energy projects, or bitching about the republicans, I have a little side job tasting ice cream. My friend Tess and I run the Cape Cod Ice Cream Challenge.
Recently we were on NPR talking all about our adventures in ice cream. Check them out here.
I Now Live In A Jungle
It has rained more this summer and spring than is has not. Seriously it seems like it is raining 7 our of ever ten days as of late. If I wanted to live in a rain forest I would move to Brazil. I know its silly to complain about the weather, but damn could a brother get a little sun. Seriously.
Hello Big Brother, Welcome To America
We already know the government is watching out phones, and our internet (Hi Dick, Hi George! Hope you enjoy the site) now it seems they may be looking over our bank records as well.
The Bush administration, relying on a presidential declaration of emergency, has secretly been tapping into a vast global database of confidential financial transactions for nearly five years, according to U.S. government and industry officials.
Initiated shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, the surveillance program has used a broad new interpretation of the Treasury Department’s administrative powers to bypass traditional banking privacy protections. It has swept in large volumes of international money transfers, including many made by U.S. citizens and residents, in an effort to track the locations, identities and activities of suspected terrorists.
Current and former counterterrorism officials said the program works in parallel with the previously reported surveillance of international telephone calls, faxes and e-mails by the National Security Agency, which has eavesdropped without warrants on more than 5,000 Americans suspected of terrorist links. Together with a hundredfold expansion of the FBI’s use of “national security letters” to obtain communications and banking records, the secret NSA and Treasury programs have built unprecedented government databases of private transactions, most of them involving people who prove irrelevant to terrorism investigators.
Now for all I know the good people at the NSA are only going after “suspected terrorists” (and that is the problem we have NO idea what they are doing). But these people have been using up a lot of my “trust capital” as of late. A free society demands an open government. We can not be so afraid of getting attacked that we give up all of our freedoms. If you are monitoring my emails, phone calls, and bank records, you had better have a warrant that targets ME specifically and states what you think I did.
There should not be broad warrants that apply to thousands of people. What even happened to “innocent until proven guilty?” Imagine if the government went through your mail box in your front lawn, g-men strolling door to door reading all of your mail. They might find evidence of terrorist activity, but its far more likely that they would simply be invading the privacy of millions of innocent Americans.
This is exactly what is happening now. Our phones are tapped, our email is being read, and now our bank records may be tapped. All because they “might” find something. When does this end? National ID cards? Mandatory fingerprinting? Mandatory DNA submission? If you are not worried, you are not paying attention.
If this continues we are on a path to a fascist government that knows everything about everyone. George Orwell almost got it right. Instead of a militarily enforced “Panopticon” or all seeing eye, the government has instead lulled us all into an amazing apathy, and then used that apathy to do whatever they want. We are not marching in the streets, we are not calling our leaders, we simply go back to watching American Idol, and ignoring the problem.
Now is the time for action people, call your rep, call your congress person, vote, write the white house, organize marches, start a blog, tell a friend, DO ANYTHING. Our freedoms are worth fighting for.
“Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”
Ben Franklin
New Solar Thermal Panel Project
I just added a new solar thermal panel project to the project section of the main site. It works a lot better than the first one did. Check it out and leave a comment here.
Monday Confessional
WOW! It has been a busy busy week already. Big meeting at work, lots of stuff done this weekend, just crazy good all over. Got a new project for The Sietch coming soon, my ice cream website is getting lots of attention, had a wonderful time with Tess this weekend, went swimming twice this weekend, and saw opening day of the Cape Cod Baseball League game between Bourne and Wareham. All in all I am a happy boy. Might even fix the whole being homeless things soon. It’s ok if you want to say “ooooh” or perhaps “ahhhh” I can understand how you would be amazed at all of that.
But in a more serious note, work is getting really heavy, been very busy as of late. As such my blogging has slaked off a bit. Sorry! I do love blogs, (tappy tappy tappy), but work and real life has to come first. Those solar panels and wind turbines are not going to install themselves.
In geek related news I stopped using java script to do my RSS to HTML and am now using a PHP script from Carp. The problem was that google and other search engines could not index my java script generated stuff. The php shows up as good old html, so it gets indexed better.
So that’s about it, trying to cram 40 hours a week’s worth of work into 20, and then get everything else done after that. All while having as much fun as humanly possible. Its a wonderful life. My mom is even coming to visit me over the 4th holiday. Go mom! Cape Cod is great in the summer, if you don’t mind gridlock, crazy tourists, and the chance that some old snow bird could kill you at any moment with there giant Lincoln town car.
Why, just yesterday someone was giving me shit about my pro wind stickers on my car. Screaming crazy stuff at me, who does that. I mean I don’t scream at people with Bush stickers, or anti-wind farm stickers. I thought that was the whole idea behind bumper stickers, you let other people know how you feel. His car had no stickers. He was not following the rules. In case you read this crazy guy, buy a sticker that reflects your views, and then put it on your car. Then shut up. Thank you.
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